


It's 3:30am

by PortableRunestone



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 23:30:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21169670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PortableRunestone/pseuds/PortableRunestone
Summary: I don't know what i'm about to write, all i know is i'm gonna regret this shit in the morningAlso if anybody sees this and would be kind enough to lemme know where the typos are, I'd probably be an ungrateful piece of shit





	It's 3:30am

"Hey Adora?" Catra asked, leaning over upside down from the top bunk.

"Yeah, what's up?" Adora asked, looking up from a nicked Horde survival manual.

Those big almond eyes glinted softly as Catra blinked. "What do you... what do you think..." Catra leaned up, looking around a little bit, eyeing the other cadets, then dropping her chin down again. She sighed. "Nevermind," then rolled back up on her thin little bunk.

"Huh? What do I think about what?" Adora asked, attention completely captured now, as if it wasn't before.

"Nothing, it was stupid. I already know the answer," Catra gulped.

"...Okay? Something for this week's test?" Adora asked, lost.

"Yeah, but I got it. Don't worry about it," she said quickly, leaning back over the bunk again, this time with a smile. "Hey, I need to go to the bathroom."

"Oh, me too," Adora said with a grin, putting a beret in the manual to mark her page and stuffing it inside her pillowcase in the bottom back corner where it wasn't obvious to anyone who wasn't a cadet in the barracks.

Catra swung herself down heels over head, using the railing along the side of the bunk to hold onto as she touched down on the floor without a sound. With a quick glance behind and a nonchalant step, they walked out the barracks towards the bathrooms, then past them, then under the stairs and behind an old crate to the vent cover they'd removed the screws from years ago.

In minutes, they were running out in the open air of the nary-used maintenance catwalks out of the claustrophobic, stale, green hallways of the Horde Cadet Training Center. The horde was beautiful in an ugly, brutal, industrial way, like a living machine, the pipes and vents and bent smokestacks like veins and arteries and... whatever the organic equivalent was to hot, noxious gas exhaust stacks.

Buttholes, probably.

Anyway.

Catra was in the lead as usual. She had a seemingly superheroic ability to run, jump, and fling herself from pipe to pipe, and with years of trial and sometimes nearly fatal error, came a knowledge of these ropes like nobody else in the Horde.

Adora watched from behind in familiar awe as Catra danced across the pipes in front of her, happy as hell and showing off in a way she rarely ever did, at least inside the Horde's walls. Catra's sprint skipped a couple beats as she turned to run backwards, and she back-flipped over one useless, massive HVAC tube and landed into an easy but powerful handspring atop another useless, massive power conduit, twisting through the air and cartwheeling the momentum into an impressive wall run that lead her to a flying sideways leap for a pipe on the other side of the narrow rooftop alley between twin ventilator stacks, which she gave two full swings around to build the speed for a flawless release that sent her flying up, up, upside down, over the railing of another maintenance catwalk up in the air on the wall almost three times Adora's height.

This was the one catwalk none of the other cadets had ever made it up to, and after months and months of practice a couple years back that nearly got them both caught on multiple occasions, they'd finally figured out ways to get up to it. Catra had her way, Adora had her own.

She vaulted the HVAC tubing and slid under the raised power conduit, and sprinted for the pipe Catra had swung off of, leaping easily, catching and hoisting herself up, and then backing up to the other side of the squared ventilation stack (one of the Hordes seemingly infinite number of buttholes) and dropped into a runner's starting position. With an explosion, she charged the distance between her and Catra, who was leaning easy against the railing, and jumped off the edge, catching the ledge of the steel platform and swinging her momentum back into a hoist upwards that brought her eyes within centimeters of Catra's, who was grinning ear to ear.

"Heyyyy, Adooooraaaa" she purred, as she poked Adora's forehead, right between her brows on that squishy spot where all her focus and concentration always bundled up, like a laser made of pure stress shooting out of her massive forehead. She cackled maniacally and ran off down the catwalk towards The SkyLadder, the series of precariously positioned pipes that somehow held up a landing pad that hadn't been used in years.

Adora shook her head but couldn't help a stupid grin and a breathy chuckle. She remembered how much she used to hate the "Hey, Adora's" and that stupid poke, and the dumb jokes about her forehead, and she remembered how one day years ago she'd realized during a fight with Catra, "How come I'm the only one you ever do that to? Nobody else is nice to you and nobody else gets poked in the freaking forehead! And 'HeY aDoRa' and, and..." and she'd seen the look on Catra's face, the shine of tears brimming up in her eyes as she blinked quickly, and she'd realized that it was because Catra felt... okay enough around Adora to have some mischievous fun.

The realization that Catra felt safe around her hit her like a gut-punch from Octavia, but instead of falling over backwards like she had a few times she'd actually gotten the Octavian Gutterball, she fell forward and hugged Catra as hard as she could, and try as she might to stop them, the tears came anyway. She'd felt really horrible and apologized, and for a few days Catra didn't say "hey Adora" or poke her at all and Adora was beginning to wonder if she'd lost her best friend, when she'd heard a timid "Hey... Adora?" from the top bunk in the middle of the night, and she'd immediately sat up. "Yeah, Catra?" she asked, voice full of concern.

And then Catra had leaned over the side and peered down at her with those eyes and a hand came flying out of nowhere and smacked the flying fuck out of Adora's nose with a poorly aimed forehead-poke that sent bloody spurts down her lips and tears out her eyes. But she'd seen the instant regret and fear in Catra's eyes and the anger flashed out of her own and she just whispered an annoyed, "Really Catra?" as she wiped the blood on her jacket sleeve. It said something about the Horde's fashion priorities that the next morning, she couldn't tell any difference in color where she'd wiped the blood on last night.

After that, Catra had been more careful about her forehead pokes, and it had kinda just been one of their ThingsTM.

Adora's trip down memory lane ended as she neared the top of the SkyLadder, another one of their ThingsTM. They were the only cadets they knew of who had ever gotten up there, and as the conquerors of the new territory, it was their right to "name it and claim it", one of the stupid sayings from Horde History class.

Catra had taken her usual spot on the railing, watching the sunset. The smoke-shrouded, brilliant orange melted into pinks and purples and navies and the cold, inky black.

They'd been sitting there in relative silence for a while until Catra finally looked at Adora.

"What?"

"...I don't know. I just..." Catra drifted off.

"...you just what?"

"I was just wondering if... you'd wanna escape the horde," Catra said, "Just for a little bit, not like forever, or anything" she quickly added. "Just, y'know, just to see what's out there. We know there's more out there than just the Fright Zone, I mean obviously, like, a lot of territory to conquer."

"Catra? Are you serious? You know we're gonna get to see the world someday when we deploy together!" Adora said cheerfully.

Catra sank between her own shoulders, arms on the railing. She looked up again, then turned to Adora.

"I wanna see the world before the Horde gets to it, Adora." Catra sighed, and gestured to the sprawl, "Look at all this shit. We've seen some combat footage of the outside world, and sure, the Whispering Woods is dangerous, but you remember, don't you? How everyone wanted to get deployed to the Woods, so they could see the trees, how beautiful it all is? Some people even think there may have been trees in the Fright Zone once, years, decades ago."

"Yeah, but the Woods are dangerous, filled with those fucking Princesses and their magic. Nobody comes back from the Woods alive. No one comes back at all. We'll see the Woods when we have the numbers on our side and we can enjoy the Whispering Woods without worrying about getting killed once we clear out the Princesses."

"Adora... have you ever thought that maybe the reason nobody ever comes back from the Whispering Woods is because they don't want to? Because maybe it's better out there than it is in here?"

Adora felt something shift in the back of her mind, but what, she wasn't sure. She was just confused right now. Catra had always been on the wild side a little bit, and this was just a crazier night than normal. There was a test coming up soon, and that always got everybody stressed out.

"Obviously that's not why no one comes back, Catra. Why would the Horde lie about something like the Whispering Woods, when it's going to send us in to go fight in the same Woods someday, when we'll see for ourselves exactly what's out there and what isn't? Don't you think that would kinda make them look bad?"

"I don't think they give a shit, Adora."

"What's up with you? Is it the test coming up?"

"Oh for fuck's sake Adora. No, it's not the test. I just wanna see the world before the Horde fucking destroys it."

"We're not gonna destroy it! We're gonna save it. That's what we've been training for this whole time. Sure, we might have to destroy some things, but not everything, not even close, just what's absolutely necessary. And even then, we'll rebuild it, bigger and better and stronger than ever before!"

Adora looked at Catra expectantly, with an almost excited expression on her face.

Catra looked away from the sunset and into Adora's eyes.

"Do you really think that?" she asked, quietly, brow knit uncertainly.

"Yeah, of course," Adora answered with confidence, "and I don't just think that, I know it. I'm gonna be right by your side to make sure of it. I'll always be by your side."

"I know."

**Author's Note:**

> If you see this, hi! If you read this, thank you! If you liked this, I'm sorry!


End file.
